Amid the flurry of news about investments in carbon markets, a new WRM study has taken a closer look at a REDD initiative underway in the municipality of Portel, in the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon. The case illustrates what is known as "carbon colonialism".
The Green Economy
The Green Economy is a tactic used to “clean up” the image of corporations rather than address corporate capture and capitalism as the true drivers of deforestation. False solutions promoted under the Green Economy include certification, sustainable forest management, ecosystem services, REDD+, the bioeconomy, nature-based climate solutions, and zero net deforestation. Rather than stopping it, these “solutions” support corporate-driven destruction that is causing a deep social and ecological crisis.
Publications
28 April 2022
This publication gathers eleven articles that reflect on fundamental and dangerous dimensions of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), the dominant forest policy around the world since 2007.
Bulletin articles
16 January 2023
What governments agree (or don't agree) on during the UN climate summits is not that relevant in the real world of carbon market expansion. Companies, governments, conservation NGOs, consultancies, brokers, banks and many other interested players are working hard to establish carbon market schemes as ‘the only way forward’.
Bulletin articles
16 January 2023
In 2022, WRM, along with other allies, spoke with several authors from the publication, “15 Years of REDD: A Mechanism Rotten at the Core”. The aim was to reflect on the different layers of harmful impacts that REDD has caused over the last 15 years. Here is a summary of each contribution.
Bulletin articles
16 January 2023
Brazil and Indonesia share a particular similarity: at some point its rulers decided to build a new capital city. While rulers in Brazil built Brasilia some 60 years ago, construction of the new Indonesian capital is currently underway. Both projects reinforce a colonial State, in spite of their promoters claiming the opposite. Both stories however, also show the role of social struggles as a way to revert a history of colonialism. (Available also in Bahasa Indonesia)
Bulletin articles
16 January 2023
In line with certain aspects of a recent WRM study, we show how four REDD projects in the municipality of Portel, in the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon, contribute to perpetuating certain fantasies inherent to the idea of carbon trading through the REDD mechanism.
Bulletin articles
16 January 2023
Most of the causes of deforestation that were identified in a UN-led global analysis from 1999 continue to exist. Yet, the “solutions” proposed since then have become new underlying causes of deforestation. In this scenario, projects that destroy the forest and “green” projects depend on each other in order to be viable.
Other information
16 January 2023
An investigation by SourceMaterial and Unearthed exposed some of the impacts of a major tree-planting carbon offsetting project in the Republic of Congo from oil giant TotalEnergies, which was announced at the end of 2021.
Multimedia
14 November 2022
Watch the conversation with the authors of the WRM publication “15 Years of REDD: A Mechanism Rotten at the Core”. The webinar was held on November 3, 2022.
Articles
17 October 2022
On 3 November, join a conversation to reflect on “15 Years of REDD: A Mechanism Rotten at the Core”.
Bulletin articles
11 October 2022
Industrial tree plantations have always been about corporate control over community fertile lands. The monoculture model inherently endangers communities’ survival, food sovereignty and autonomy, deepens the violence of patriarchy and racism while enforcing the same destructive and oppressive way of organizing land (and thus, people) as the one enforced during the colonial era.
Bulletin articles
12 September 2022
People in Pari Island are seeing their houses and business more frequently under water. Besides their struggles against corporate-led tourism, four Island’s residents are taking legal action against one of the major emitters of carbon dioxide in the world and hence a major responsible for their situation: the Holcim cement corporation.